my brother's suggestion of a) go for the silver hammer and the wings and b) when it hits a certain level, don't pick up the coins... use them as blockers has served me fairly well. The highest level i've reached now is 14.

i'm wrestling with the issue of completely abandoning the coins. On the one hand, when my health gets down somewhat low, it would be nice to be able to have enough money to go into the shop to replenish my health or even get the sixth heart and then replenish. On the other hand, going into a shop in the later levels is almost suicide because of the initial wave of things you have to analyze once you get out.

i think i'd be more inclined to ignore all of the coins if it wasn't for the fact that in the later levels i have an automatic reflex to go into the store for some reason and i really screw myself.

Hehe, it's funny though, because I just finished reading all of those entries.

Anyway, played it again and got all the "stores" in the 4/5th level, and none during level 8..when all of a sudden 5 or 6 required-to-hit creatures came up, two of which were the swinging spike-ball guys, one was a normal red, one a yellow, and I think one a green..anyway, completely screwed up the order and ended up hitting both the swinging spike-ball guys when they were swinging :<

i'm not sure if i agree about the gold hammer. Timing problems come partially from the reaction time of your hammer, and having the wings makes it so that you're used to that timing for longer in the game, and when it becomes more important.

i've started adopting this strategy of going for Everything in the first few levels and then starting to slowly ignore coins at level 10. It moves slowly enough for me that i can still pick some stuff up and not distract myself from the enemy bit, and i can still go for hearts without any problem whatsoever.

once it hits level 13-15, i completely ignore the coins, even if i have coins across the entire board. Every now and again i'll find a bunch of 3 to add, but mostly my eyes stray higher than where the coins are because that's where i look for enemies - and what i think i've discovered helps me distinguish between blue bad guys and blue bombs, because the bombs are hardly ever in my line of sight.

but I just made it to level 16, and i've discovered that the line of sight thing doesn't help quite as much because the enemies appear almost instantly as opposed to actually rising up on the platform, and that feels *very* different from all of the other levels.

I think the game could benefit from more depth. The number thing is nice, but it'd be neat to have numbers that have swinging chains or bombs. Number enemeis are also the only enemy that you have to wait to hit... if you're quick enough, you can hit everything else immediately, and i wish that there was an enemy that started *out* as a bombhead and then turned into a head you had to hit. Preferably a different color than blue.

one mis-hit on a bomb is -200hp, which is 90 coins of health, which will take at least 30-40 double-hits to get that many coins, which is a lot of enemies that are going to be appearing quickly because you've cleared the space early. it's better to leave the coins to slow the enemies down, and concentrate on getting better at hitting.

*nods* yeah, that makes sense.

i wish shops wouldn't appear after a certain level. I still have a natural instinct to go into them, and at level 14 or higher, it kills me. Once i went into a store at level 14 by accident and had about 90 coins, so i bought two hearts to accumulate my health to almost full. Came out to the plethorea of enemies and got nabbed by a blue bomb guy. well worth the trade. :p